V. 9.4
(Armstrong Selections from the Enneads)
Why must we go higher than soul, instead of considering it as the first principle? First of all, Nous is other and better than soul, and the better comes first by nature. For it is not true, as people think, that ‘soul when it is made perfect produces intelligence’: for what could make soul in potency come to be in act unless there was some cause to bring it to actuality? If it happened by chance, it would be possible for soul not to come to actual existence. So we must consider that the first realities are actual and self-sufficient and perfect : imperfect things are posterior to them and are perfected by their producers who, like fathers, bring to perfection what in the beginning they generated imperfect: the imperfect is matter in relation to the principle which makes it, and is perfected by receiving form. Further, if soul is passible, there must be something impassible (or everything will be destroyed by the passage of time), so there must be something before soul. And if soul is in the universe, there must be something outside the universe, and in this way too there must be something prior to soul. For since what is in the universe is in body and matter, nothing remains the same; so [if that was all that existed] man and all the logoi would not be eternal or continue the same. One can see from these and many other arguments that Nous must exist before soul.